February 03rd, 2022

Bringing cinema back this week in honor of the mountain top being reached later this week. We love the award-winners, auteurs and deep movies as much as the next person. However, in honor of the upcoming double-feature of Moonfall and Jackass Forever we all get the break that we probably need more than we know it.

We’ll celebrate the popcorn flying, idiocy reigning supreme because at the end of the day if we want to see something else at the box-office, we kinda need these two to succeed, right?

Bad trip with Eric Andre and Lil’ Rel Howery is one of those rides you quite literally can’t take your eyes off of, much like the car wreck that it is. Trust me, in this case, this is a compliment. A wonderful blend of reality, staged reality and some dashes of plot to make this one more than just a 90-minute YouTube video. For such a gross-out, over-the-too movie it does layer on an affection for its characters, which might sound ridiculous and that’s just the point - it is. Even as real-life seems to be one long highlight reel of outtakes from Idiocracy, this blend of car wreck and improv hits the right mix of laughs and outrageousness to shock even in 2022.

We’ve honored Jackass Forever with a nod to the outrageous stunts and shock and awe but we can’t forget to also find a spirit animal for Moonfall. We might have become numb to Dwayne Johnson vehicles appearing like a utility bill nearly every month but one of the most fun and over-the-top ones is Skyscraper. Here’s a portion of IMDB summary: “Ten full years after that fateful hostage situation that cost him his left leg, the former leader of an FBI Hostage Rescue Team and now a private security consultant, Will Sawyer, travels with his family to exotic Hong Kong to certify the world's tallest skyscraper, the Pearl . . . Now, the city's safest building has trapped Will's family somewhere in the 96th floor, above the raging inferno, and Sawyer, with the police hot on his trail, must summon up the courage to enter the high-rise. But, can he reach his family before the all-consuming fire turns the skyscraper into a massive, 225-storey chimney?” Furthering the Rawson Marshall Thurber collaborations catalog, this one is a throwback to high concepts of the 1980s movies - for the better. Plus, the wildly underused Neve Campbell is along for the ride as Dwayne Johnson’s wife. Sure, a “225-story chimney” concept is silly but the movie knows that and embraces it with open arms, just like the Jackass franchise.

In 2022, if we live in a world of cinematic theme parks, we need the new rides to open sometimes instead of a constant flow of known universes. Sure, Jackass is the fourth in a franchise but - for better or worse twenty years later - it represents something different and what was once counter-culture, the outsiders and misfits. In the here and now, the movies like Javkass and Moonfall are the movies we need as we wait in line at the cinematic theme park with maybe a chance to pull us out to something unexpected.

The Full Mix

The Grub

Hmmm, what goes with battling an elderly man, Buscemi as a serial killer, Sandler, The Rock and getting violated by a gorilla? Feels like you should play it safe and just grab a pizza my friend.